To think that old wives tale about ovens on Christmas Day is true

[Newbameforanewdecade]

On Christmas Day my roast potatoes took .... nigh on two hours to roast... on full heat etc.

Everyone just said “oh the powder dips on Christmas Day”. I’ve never heard this before (have cooked for 16 with no issues but have just moved home).

Is it really at thing or an old wives tale? Am starting to believe it

Mine were perfect also. I cook the turkey the day before and have it in the slow cooker in gravy ready for when I need it, so the roasties basically have the oven to themselves unti the last 20/25 mins when the pigs/stuffing or whatever else we are having (haggis balls this year) go in on the shelf below.

Electric here. I knew something was wrong because of the tates. I bought an oven thermometer and recalibrated the oven and have had no more problems with faulty roasting.
I do have to recalibrate the oven every effing time the power goes out, but I have an oven thermometer so no big deal.

Par boil potatoes and then whack them into hot dripping or sunflower oil. In at a very high heat and top of the oven to start with, turn a couple of times and then you can turn turn it down a bit.

And i take it everyone has preheated their oven? There was a thread recently about people putting stuff into a cold oven - If I was dead i'd spin in my grave...

For those asking

-par boiled to perfection

• hot goose fat (sizzled when it put them in)

Possiblly overstuffed Oven

The problem is that everyone buys into the goose fat thing and it just doesn't get as hot as some other fats

We have goose rather than turkey at Christmas and I take the goose fat straight out from under the goose in the roasting tray and pour it onto the parboiled potatoes (which are in a pre-heated tray) - the roasts are always lovely and crispy, and gooey in the middle. I find the trick is to cut them on the smaller side so they crisp up much faster.

I've got two pots of goose fat in the freezer now for future use too!

Nah, still not buying the goose fat. :o I tried it once on it's own - potatoes not as crispy, mixed it with some oil, still not as crispy. The sweet spot for me is par boiled and fluffed up, placed into smoking beef dripping, turned and then sprayed with sunflower oil.

Mine were fine. I have a large oven and always do spuds, pigs in blankets etc after the turkey comes out, though.

I toss mine in butter, with garlic and rosemary, leave for a bit, then chuck into rapeseed oil.

Wax Have you tried it straight from the goose, though? It does make a difference if it's properly fresh.

I agree beef dripping makes good roast potatoes - but the taste is slightly jarring with poultry. I use sunflower oil on its own with chicken.

I totally agree OP - we live in a rural-ish part of the home counties and we have found that gas pressure is lower and our gas cooker takes longer to cook things on Sundays and particularly at Christmas. Lived here 30 years+ and it has always been the same (including today - well yesterday now we're past midnight).

Funny thing is though, on Christmas Day this year it was fine.

Never had a goose, too fatty and not enough meat for my hungry boys. We used to do a duck when they were small.

I'll take your word for it that it's better fresh.

I don't notice any beef flavour from the roasties but then by the time i've sprinkled them with sea salt and they are on the plate of deliciousness, it;s hard to detect :) DC2 eats each item individually so i'll need to ask him. When it isn't Christmas, I usually just use oil. Rapeseed also doesn't get hot enough for my liking.

Goose is fatty, yes, but there is a fair amount of meat - ours served four on Christmas day and the leftovers did a casserole for four on Boxing Day. The advantage of the fattiness is that it needs no basting - you just need to empty the roasting pan of fat every hour (you can then freeze the fat you don't use for roasting veg for future use).

If you've never had it I definitely recommend giving it a go, though maybe not for Christmas in case you don't like it. Tesco have frozen geese for £20 - the fattiness makes them freeze well although a fresh one is always the tip-top - perhaps something to consider as an Easter option? You also get the liver in the giblets which makes a wonderful addition to your stuffing.

That's not how electrical power distribution works at all! And, as others have said, electricity usage on Christmas Day is much lower than usual because so many businesses etc. are closed.

It's almost certainly trying too cook too much at once. I did Christmas dinner for 13 last year and the potatoes were a mushy mess. Cooked for 7 this year, and split them over 2 roasting tins, and they were perfect.

I'm definitely up for giving it a try but I've now been using a turkey recipe that cooks it in about an hour and a half and you only baste every 20 minutes for the last hour so I'm very taken with the simplicity and quickness :) We tend to do a complete repeat on boxing day though this year we had black pudding with it instead of stuffing whereas we had haggis with it in Christmas day.

If it's an electric oven, and the thermostat says it's 200 deg, then it's 200 deg. Even if the power did dip, it would just take longer to get hot. But if it's the right temp for roasting potatoes, it's the right temp for roasting potatoes.

If power was dipping, surely your lights would dim or something?

I thought the voltage of the oven is the voltage of the oven (or is it wattage?), so if power dipped below that voltage, the oven would go off entirely? Trying to remember my physics classes (which I hated lol).

I think it was true once upon a time but the National Grid are on it.

like usually making roasts if they didn’t look crispy at 30 minutes you’d pop back in 5 without any second thought

Well, that's where you are going wrong. Roast potatoes take 40 minutes.

Just a jam packed oven. We had similar here this year - moved house, oven is a bit shoddy anyway, not like the high tech ovens at our old house. Roasts took an age but I had overcrowded the pan. When the meat was done I split them up into two trays whacked the oven up and they recovered

Yes! Everything took a lot longer to cook than it usually would!

Agree it's the amount of stuff you had in there. The more there is the longer they take to cook.

I agree with the oven being stuffed. We've 2 ovens and a hostess trolley from the 1970s (was gifted from my parents' friends years ago and lives in the garage all year until Christmas Day!) and it makes life so much easier.

@WaxOnFeckOff I also find using goose fat impossible! Never get crispy roast potatoes. I used rapeseed oil as usual and they were delicious!

If you Google the smoking points of the various fats you like to use, you'll see that they are all different. My personal preference is for as high a smoking point as possible with a really hot oven as I find that they absorb the least oil and are crisper, however we might not all be going for the same style of roasties

Goose fat potatoes work if you get the fat got to the point of smoking before you put the potatoes in.
I parboil mine the day before. Allow to cool and then let them sit in vegetable oil over night. Put goose fat in the roasting dish and you then get the extra crisp from the veg oil and the flavour from the goose fat.
I've also had much better roasties using pyrex rather than a metal tin, you just have to factor in extra warm up time.
My mum always said that gas ovens don't work properly on Christmas day as too many people were using gas. I suspect it was her crap cooker and using both ovens and all four rings at once was too much for it's sensibilities. I also explained how gasometers worked. Sigh, don't even have those any more. Nostalgia!